


Sleeper

by tisfan



Series: Tony Stark Bingo [25]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Gen, Psychological Trauma, Red Room (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-10-25 08:14:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17721488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: “Something has to be done with the boy, Maria.” Little did Howard know, something, indeed, was being done with the boy...For the Tony Stark Bingo, T2 - Red Room Tony





	1. Chapter 1

Tony was seven when his parents sent him off to boarding school for the first time.

Or that was how the story went. Public school didn’t challenge him, he’d been thrown out of the finest New York City private academies. _Something has to be done with the boy, Maria._

So, Jarvis had packed his things, and given Tony a hug goodbye -- his father didn’t bother to see him off, and his mother just waved -- and off Tony went.

The school nurse took a blood sample, did some tests. Tony had to sit in a room and take a lot of tests.

When the tests were over, Tony was told he was qualified for an advanced program. They injected something into his skin, just behind his ear. For a few days, he could feel the lump there, and then it went away. He was put on a plane, escorted by a stern man who didn’t answer any of Tony’s questions.

When Tony couldn’t sit still on the airplane, he was handcuffed in place.

When he picked the lock in about ten minutes using a bit of wire from inside his seat cushion, Tony was punished. He’d been punished before. Howard was quick to slap, or pinch, or sometimes punch.

Tony had learned to keep the tears quiet, to not give voice to any of that “baby puling whine”.

Tony was punished until he thought he would give in, and scream, and then punished until he couldn’t see, he was blinded by pain.

They locked him in a case.

Tony picked his way out of that one, too.

He might have been slightly better off if he’d ever learned how to fly a plane. As it was, it was only his lack of height to reach pedals and buttons at the same time that foiled an escape.

Someone jammed a needle into his throat and he didn't’ remember anything after that. For a while.

***

“Oh, you’re one of those,” the girl said, looking at Tony.

Tony looked down at the engineering sheets. He was nine years old and had been trained by the Red Room for two years. Going home only once for a holiday, in which he said nothing about what had happened to him.

Tony had learned better. And he knew that they could hear him, no matter where he was.

“I suppose,” Tony said. “What are you, then?”

“A black widow,” she said.

Tony looked up at her. Red hair, pretty eyes. She was his own age. “Not yet.”

“No, not yet,” she agreed. “But I will be.”

“Good for you,” Tony said.

“You’re a sleeper,” she said. “Good little Asset, going back home to mommy and daddy? To pretend to be something you’re not anymore.”

“What am I, then?”

“An agent of Hydra,” she said.

“Hmm. Maybe.”

“Do you want to fight?”

Tony looked her over, then around. “Is it allowed?”

“In the courtyard,” she said. “I’m Natalie.”

“Tony.”

“We’ll fight.”

***

Tony went home for Christmas the year he turned twelve. Howard picked a fight about Tony’s studies or his behavior. Or something. Tony was sent back to the States to pretend to be at school for a week, a few days, enough so that people knew him, and then he’d be expelled for one reason or another. So no one would wonder why they didn’t know him well, or long.

He didn’t block Howard’s blow, although he could have.

He stood there in the knowledge that he could kill Howard Stark in a fraction of a second.

 _He might still be useful_ , that little voice in Tony’s head said. The one that talked to him during compliance.

Tony stood there, defiant, let Howard hit him a few more times. Knowing that it was Tony’s mercy that kept the man alive. Tony’s patience and his practicality.

***

They were seventeen years old, as alike as twins, as unalike as polar opposites. But Natalie was still his friend.

A deadly friend. She could kill him if she wanted to. She would kill him if she was told to.

It didn’t matter. She was still his friend.

“You two, report to Green Five,” they were told one morning at breakfast.

They got up, without finishing their food, without even looking at it. Reports were mandatory.

Green Five was a combat room.

Just before they reached the corridor, Tony touched Nat’s hand. He knew what he wanted to say, if he could say it. He knew what she would say, if she was allowed. Neither of them were.

_If you have to kill me, be strong. Do it quick. I forgive you._

Inside the room was a man with shaggy brown hair and blue eyes. He wore a dark uniform. He had an artificial arm. Tony’s mouth watered the instant he saw it. He wanted to take it apart. He wanted to see how it worked.

He and Nat went to the center of the room and stood there. Each proud, each ready.

“I’m James Barnes,” the man said. “You may have heard of me. They call me the Winter Soldier. You have both shown great initiative in your studies. You have been given into my care for the next eight months. I’m to make Assets of you or die trying.”

It wasn’t hyperbole.

They would become what he wanted them to be, or all three of them would die.

“Yes, sir,” Nat and Tony said together.

“Hail Hydra,” Barnes said.

“Hail Hydra.”


	2. Add Three Eggs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark Bingo Square: S4 - learning to cook
> 
> After a mission, the Hydra team regroups in the safe house and spends a little bit of downtime… just being together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> takes place a few years after Sleeper

The safe house was boring. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and television, kitchen. Dining room with horrible chairs and a table shivved up on a couple of matchbooks to keep it from shaking.

Typical Hydra bullshit.

“I am taking the shower, Tosha,” Natasha said, throwing her bags near the sofa. The sofa was very ugly, some late seventies patterned scratchy plaid with thick wooden supports. A box, with cushions, really.  “You patch up.”

“I can do it myself,” James snarled, and Tony was tempted for a moment to drop the Winter Soldier on his self-reliant ass. He didn’t, because James had been shot, and what’s more, Tony was pretty sure that bullet said Stark on it. In more ways than one.

“Of course you can,” Tony said, easing James onto one of the rickety dining room chairs. The light was better. And linoleum was easier to clean blood stains off of. “But I can do it faster.”

James made another unpleasant noise, and Tony ignored it, because James was probably in pain. It didn’t matter, really. There should be-- ah, there it was, under the kitchen counter, next to the dishwasher. A first aid kit.

“Here,” he said, dropping the kit on the table. “Get out of your shirt and let me see. I’ll secure the location--”

Tony scrambled around in the kitchen, finding the stash of guns and knives, bullets and money, putting all their new resources on the counter where they could see it and get to it, easily. There was a packet of false IDs just waiting for them, frozen inside a chunk of ice. Tony threw that in the sink, stopped moving long enough to help cut James out of his armor and clothing, until he was stripped to the waist. The shot was clean, in through the shoulder, out the chest. Missed anything major and didn’t break his collarbone, so all that was good.

“Just cauterize it,” James told him.

“Don’t be stupid,” Tony told him. “It’ll scar that way, and then everyone will know when they see you that you’ve been shot. Who knows, you might need to be the Summer Soldier and take a target out on a nude beach.”

James actually barked out a laugh. “Okay, okay, you win. Just make it neat.”

“Tosha does the best stitches,” Natasha said. She was wrapped in a thin towel, her hair piled wet and dripping over her head. She went to her bags and started rummaging around in them, looking for clothes.

They’d all seen each other in various states of undress a hundred times or more during training. But Tony never failed to notice how beautiful his partners were. He wondered, sometimes, if they thought he was beautiful, or only just useful.

He’d even caught them kissing, a few times, and once was pretty sure he’d heard more than just kissing. There were strict protocols in Hydra against fraternization. Tony knew they were aware.

Neither of them had ever offered to kiss him.

Tony did the best stitches because he completely ignored most of the items in the Hydra standard medikit. He’d made his own stitches, part nano-tech, part miniature ziplocks. His efforts to submit those to Hydra’s research and development, or field teams, had been lackluster.

He cleaned the wound, then laid the lock-stick material over the hole. “It won’t hurt long,” he told James.

“Tony-- thank you,” James said. He put his hand over Tony’s for a moment, the touch doing things to Tony’s mid-section. Even after James had moved his hand away, Tony could feel it, the weight of his fingers, the heat of his skin. He wondered what it would be like to kiss James. He wondered if James would let him. He wondered if it would make Natasha angry, if he did.

He’d meant to say anytime, a casual. Blow it off. No problem. And he found himself looking into those blue eyes. “Anything--” he said, then coughed. “Anything you need. You know that.”

“I do,” James said. “We both do.”

***

There was nothing to eat in the safe house. Not even protein bars. Which meant someone had to go for a store trip.

“Does it have to be me, because I am the girl?” Natasha demanded. Hydra trained her to be a Widow, sexy and deadly and female. And even in Hydra, who thought themselves so much better than the rest of the world, they looked down on women; women seldom made command roles, no matter how useful or skilled. Look at Hale. She was smart and strong and well-trained, highly placed in the US military. And her secret role in Hydra? Was to be a damn incubator.

Natasha put her hand to her stomach, uneasily. At least they wouldn’t do that to _her_.

“It has to be you because I’m Tony Stark,” Tosha said. “I can’t walk into a damn grocery store in the States and not be recognized.”

That would serve Hydra well, later. Now, Tosha’s role was mainly backup and support. Repair of the Asset. Computer infiltration, electronics, and driver.

“You will drive me,” Natasha said. She didn’t like driving.

“Of course,” Tosha said, easily enough. “What do we need for food, I’ll get you a card ready.”

“We should learn how to cook,” James spoke up, suddenly. “Not eating out of crinkly packages all day. I would kill someone for a meatloaf and gravy.”

Natasha didn’t laugh; she’d seen James kill a man for less.

Tony pulled out his pocket secretary, a device about the size of a scientific calculator, that Tony had adapted as some sort of electronic paper, phone link up, and micro computer. “What’s in it?”

James shook his head. “I don’t know. But there’s a bookstore on the way--” He unfolded the map, which had the town laid out for them in neat, Hydra code. Places to hide, switching stations for the power company, sewer lines, shops. A gun store. “Here. Get a cookbook.”

“Really?” Tony’s eyebrow went up.

“Why not,” James replied. “We will be here weeks at least, on this mission. We should have something to occupy our down time. We will learn to cook. All of us. We will eat together, at the table. As if we are a family. We may be called on, someday, to pose as simple citizens. We should know how.”

***

He’d expected the team to rebel against it. Cooking, cleaning. Pretending. But James had to admit, Tosha and Natasha surprised him.

Even if it took them four attempts to make anything remotely resembling meatloaf.

Natasha was a dab hand at cutting vegetables, and Tosha was slowly figuring out what instructions in the cookbook meant. Since neither of them had done more than sometimes pour boiling water into a cup of noodles, they’d had to start at the very beginning.

Tony was already up, nursing a cup of coffee and staring at the table aimlessly when James walked in.

“Do you-- I can’t figure out how to… my dad’s butler used to make eggs, not scrambled, or anything like what’s in this book, but he cut a hole in toast and they tasted like butter, it was amazing.”

“Eggs in a basket,” James said, slowly. Sometimes, he would get flashes of a life, before Hydra. A life he had once loved. A boy, he had once loved.

Now, he was Hydra, and that man was forgotten. Mostly.

But there was a boy he loved, right there, looking into his cup of coffee.

“I know how, Tosha. Would you like me to show you?”

“Yeah-- er, no, not really,” Tosha admitted. “I just want you to make me eggs. Pretend like I matter, we’re doing that, right, pretending to be a family. Dad and mom, and completely unwelcome child.”

“What?”

“I just-- I’ve lived this before, James,” Tosha said. “At home, all the time. I don’t-- I won’t tell, I promise, but I… would like to be reassigned.”

“You won’t tell who what?” James knew. Of course Tosha knew. Tosha was very smart, even if it wasn’t always obvious how observant he was.

“Look, you like her, I get that, who wouldn’t like Nat? She’s beautiful and perfect and competent, and… everything. So, so much everything. And so are you. I understand. It’s dangerous, and you’ll get caught, but-- hey, I would totally do it.”

James let himself smile. “Would you? Totally do it?”

“In a heartbeat,” Tosha admitted.

“You do not need to be reassigned,” James said. “The team would suffer in your absence.”

“There are other techs,” Tosha said. “And then I wouldn’t-- look, it’s just hard, okay.”

“We would suffer,” James promised, going to Tony and taking his hand. “Because we love you, and we would miss you.”

“What--” Tosha actually recoiled, as if love was not something he was even remotely prepared to accept.

“We’ve spoken of it, Nat and I, wondering if you would ever do more than look,” James said. “We didn’t want to scare you, or upset you. You sometimes love your machines more than anything else.”

“That’s a lie,” Tosha said, and suddenly James found himself with an armful of shaking, shivering Tosha. “That’s a lie. I know-- I know how it looks, but.”

James lifted Tosha’s chin. “But you do love us, which is good. You do not need to be reassigned.”

“No, I guess not,” Tosha said. “But we’re going to get caught.”

Natasha leaned against the door in the kitchen, her bathrobe loose and open in the front, showing off the gap between her breasts, and her tiny little underwear. “You will not let that happen.”

Tosha stiffened, swallowed, stiffened in yet another way that James could feel. “Uh, no, I guess I won’t.”

 


End file.
